Pure Storage FlashArray vs. Pure Storage FlashBlade

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pure Storage FlashArray
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage in Mountain View, California offers all-flash array data storage promising affordability, high availability, and consistent performance.N/A
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Pure Storage offers FlashBlade, a scale-out file and object storage – architected to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) while accelerating tomorrow's discoveries and insights.N/A
Pricing
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Considered Both Products
Pure Storage FlashArray
Chose Pure Storage FlashArray
Pure has better granularity and the data reduction rates are much better on Pure than on this product. XtremeIO had faster sequential read/write operations.
Pure Storage FlashBlade
Chose Pure Storage FlashBlade
It delivers the following, see below, and this is why it was selected as the platform of choice.
*Supports CIFS, NFS, and object
*Speed and performance
Chose Pure Storage FlashBlade
Flasharray C is the true second-tier storage we were looking for with all the features we need.
Top Pros
Top Cons
TrustRadius Insights
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Pure Storage Flashblade and Pure Storage FlashArray are both storage solutions used by businesses to allow for affordable, scalable storage for business data.  Pure Storage FlashBlade is an Object Storage software built to store files and objects in a blade architecture that can be accessed by servers.  Pure Storage FlashArray is an Enterprise Flash Array Solution that compresses files to store for access from servers.  PureStorage FlashArray is most popular with mid-sized businesses, while Pure Storage FlashBlade is most popular with larger enterprises.

Features

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Pure Storage FlashArray are both all flash storage solutions, but they have some unique features that set them apart from each other. 

Pure Storage FlashBlade provides support for large amounts of data storage and analysis, which makes it a popular choice for larger enterprises.  Additionally, implementation and management of Pure Storage FlashBlade is simple, allowing new users to get their storage set up easily, with dashboards to provide information about their storage solution.  Additionally, storage backups are simple to set up, and data restoration is efficient.

Pure Storage FlashArray includes data compression and deduplication, allowing Pure Storage arrays to hold larger amounts of data then one would normally expect in a single array.  In addition to storing large amounts of data, Pure Storage FlashArray also has high reliability, with many users stating they never experienced unplanned downtime.  Lastly, Pure Storage FlashArray offers high speed and performance in virtual environments.

Limitations

Pure Storage FlashBlade and Pure Storage FlashArray both provide storage solutions, but they also have some limitations that are important to consider.

Pure Storage FlashBlade has limited replication features, which can be a problem for businesses seeking to replicate large amounts of data.  Additionally, Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn’t include block-level deduplication.

Pure Storage FlashArray provides an API for building integrations with other software, but there aren’t many connectors out of the box.  Businesses with many needed integrations may need to consider other options if they aren’t comfortable building out integrations. 

Pricing

Pure Storage FlashBlade and FlashArray both offer free trials businesses can use to see if the solutions will work for them before making a purchasing decision.  Detailed pricing for either solution is not available online, but businesses can reach out to the vendor for an exact quote.

Features
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Enterprise Flash Array Storage
Comparison of Enterprise Flash Array Storage features of Product A and Product B
Pure Storage FlashArray
9.3
154 Ratings
2% above category average
Pure Storage FlashBlade
-
Ratings
Flash Array Performance10.0154 Ratings00 Ratings
Flash Array Integration9.0144 Ratings00 Ratings
Data Compression8.0153 Ratings00 Ratings
Non-Intrusive Upgrades10.0148 Ratings00 Ratings
Simplicity10.0154 Ratings00 Ratings
Power Savings9.0131 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Dell SC Series / Compellent (discontinued)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Dell VMAX
Dell VMAX
Score 9.7 out of 10
Azure Blob Storage
Azure Blob Storage
Score 8.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(207 ratings)
8.4
(29 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(25 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(16 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.3
(75 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.8
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Pure Storage FlashArrayPure Storage FlashBlade
Likelihood to Recommend
Pure Storage
When you need speed, it's FAST, especially for MS SQL databases. If you are having bottlenecks, you can spend your time finding it in the code because it's not Pure Storage. Love the data reduction and duplication. We can store so much more on this unit than the base physical size. Love the data snapshots. When you need to complete copy your entire environment for testing etc. Nothing is easier, a few clicks and you are done. Extremely helpful for testing and training.
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Pure Storage
If data storage, access, and security [are] of the highest priority to your business then Pure Storage FlashBlade is an excellent tool that must be considered. Analytics or sharing that requires the fastest speeds available will benefit from the NVMe solid-state drives they use which are far superior to spinning rust. It is less ideal for those who do not require such time-critical work.
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Pros
Pure Storage
  • The Pure Array does data reduction particularly well. We've seen a 7x reduction on some of our volumes.
  • It is easy to get used to the system after coming from other storage arrays.
  • It has some welcome additions such as a smartphone app that makes it easier to view your cases, etc.
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Pure Storage
  • Speed. We are seeing large transactions take very little time.
  • Upgrades- In-place upgrades of both hardware and software are extremely easy.
  • Ease of use- I have several engineers working on this and from setup to day to day operations it is extremely easy to maintain.
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Cons
Pure Storage
  • Reporting is too general. Being a tech nerd, I want to be able to see the nitty-gritty details. I also need to be able to define canned sets of reports for problem application systems.
  • Pricing is a bit higher then some of their direct competitors .
  • Seriously, I have nothing else.
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Pure Storage
  • When reporting out a user has exceeded there quote, it only references the UID. It would certainly be nice it calls out the UID name that is clearly present in the Dashboard.
  • The ability to determine a snapshot total size would be helpful.
  • Proactive reachout to discuss new versions and assist in planning the upgrade would be a key win.
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Likelihood to Renew
Pure Storage
It has so far been a very fast and stable product. We have had wonderful support when we have needed it and the account manager and engineer attached to our organization have been very responsive with any questions and concerns we have had.
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Usability
Pure Storage
The install went smoothly, and the engineer explained every step along the way. The next couple of days he checked in to make sure that migration was running as planned. The user interface is designed with usability in mind. You don't need a dedicated "Storage Silo" to manage this product. For smaller IT departments that need to support many different workloads, this could not be a better feature
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Pure Storage
Good API, multi-protocol support is great.
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Reliability and Availability
Pure Storage
We have never had an outage with Purestorage. Yes we have had 2 drives go out but replacements were installed so fast there wasn't any issues. We have had a NVRAM module replaced but were noticed from Pure they were sending a replacement because they were predicting a failure so pure was proactive preventing any issues. Knowing Pure is monitoring our device 24x7 gives us peace of mind.
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Performance
Pure Storage
The corporation has a very diverse data load and when we migrate from a hybrid storage to pure all-flash, significant gains have already been observed. Latency always remains below 1 ms regardless of the load and volumetry used. Application performance also depends heavily on whether or not the code is more permormatic and network access infrastructure. The product has been meeting expectations
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Pure Storage
Pure Support is timely and communicative. They are always ready to assist and very skilled at what they do, no matter the time of day. Even at 12:10 a.m. on New Years Day when your array has a hiccup that causes some errors in your environment, they will be on the phone with you in an instant. If they are unable to determine the cause right away, because things appear to be normal, they will take your environment's configuration, lab it up in their support environment and then research until they figure out what caused the problem. Even if it takes 3 months. True story.
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Pure Storage
Without exception, the contacts with support have been quick and extremely knowledgeable. I do not fear getting an underqualified engineer to assess or work on my arrays. In addition to this support structure, the sales engineers are top notch as well.
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In-Person Training
Pure Storage
Excellent training and really you don't need that much. We received training at the Pure offices and also on site when the product was installed. Simple things like how to login to the GUI interface, how to setup users, how to create volume and mount it. How to make a snapshot, how to copy it and mount it. Really is pretty self explanatory on how to do things with the GUI interface. We were expecting complicated base on other vendor products, we got super simple.
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Pure Storage
Great videos and documentation. There is a common theme with PureStorage, "Keep it elegantly simple". They have great support network and great support user groups. Documentation has been very helpful with providing auditors with methods and procedures on security and other ways the product works. Great documentation on setting PureStorage to be the most effective with VM's, SQL Server, and other products.
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Pure Storage
The install was very quick. The engineer that Pure sent said that if we started by 10 am we would be done by lunchtime, and he was not kidding.
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Pure Storage
Pure Storage FlashArray came up as being the most cost-effective of the lot plus the extras added like call-home support were very welcome. The competitors' options were a lot more expensive and the call-home support added a lot more to the already high costs.
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Pure Storage
The NetApp a800 we tested was 14% faster than Pure FlashBlade with NFS workloads. However, NetApp lacked ease of administration and performing simple tasks such as creating multiple NFS volumes required scripting from the command line. Our flashblade contained 15 baldes and our NetApp was a clustered pair with each half containing 24 nvme devices.
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Scalability
Pure Storage
The product suite scales well and the FA in particular can service any need for all but the most demanding file protocol environments
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Pure Storage
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Pure Storage
  • Thanks to the deduplication that is built into the product we are seeing great reduction in total space required by consolidating similar data types on the same array.
  • Our users are very pleased with the performance.
  • The replication allowed us to move our workload from to another data center with minimal downtime.
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Pure Storage
  • We were able to consolidate 5 different storage platforms of lesser performance onto a single Flashblade and achieve much, much lower latency and higher throughput.
  • We've been able to reduce the amount of training and configuration required to just Pure Flashblade, instead of 5 different vendors and products.
  • In addition to our core use cases, Flashblade has capabilities that we are pursuing for some new projects, i.e. analytics data store and the object store features.
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ScreenShots